Skeleton wheels and transfer cylinders are conventionally employed in printing presses for conveying freshly printed sheets. Sheets are often "marked" when freshly printed surfaces contact the surface of skeleton wheels and transfer cylinders as a result of smearing the ink or causing ink to be offset onto the transfer cylinder or skeleton wheel and then reapplied to the printed sheet.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,402,267 discloses a Teflon (a registered trademark of E.I. Dupont de Nemours for a tetrafluroethylene material) covered skeleton wheel, to provide an ink repellent coating covered by a loosely supported gauze covering. The surface of the skeleton wheel is described as being ink repellent and polished such that the gauze is free to move slightly over the ink repellent support surface such that a printed sheet is supported and transferred by the skeleton wheel such that the freshly printed sheet is not marred. However, under certain printing conditions ink is transferred to the gauze which must be replaced.